Missing woman said she wanted to start a new life

Seven months into her marriage, Anu Solanki wanted out, she told officials upon returning to Chicago after she went missing last week.

She left with a friend to start a new life. She told no one -- a decision she now regrets, officials said.

"She was unhappy in the marriage," Bill Cunningham, a spokesman for the Cook County sheriff's office, said Saturday. "She said she wanted to make a clean break and end things immediately."

The 24-year-old gift shop clerk, who moved to the Chicago area after her marriage in May, was reported missing last Monday by her family after her car was found running with the door open near a dam on the Des Plaines River.

Her reappearance Friday came after days of tedious searches of the river in the cold. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart estimated the search cost taxpayers $250,000.

Solanki met with investigators on Friday night for several hours to explain why she left and where she had been. She told them she and the friend, Karan C. Jani, 23, began the 30-hour drive Monday to California, where Solanki planned to find an apartment and a roommate in L.A. and start over.

Her husband was not abusive or cruel, but she was unhappy and regretted getting married, Cunningham said.

She told officials she never meant to deceive anyone or to make people believe she had fallen into the river. "She was adamant in insisting this was not some sort of hoax," Cunningham said.

Solanki told authorities she was not romantically involved with Jani, who graduated this year from the University of Southern California in L.A. The pair met through a mutual friend and had been in contact through e-mails and phone calls during the last year, officials said.

On Thursday, Jani apparently read news reports online about the search for Solanki and the emotional appeals from her family to find her, officials said. He encouraged her to call her family, which led to her talking to police on Friday, Cunningham said.